儿童与中国的生存：梁启超论 1898 年维新变法前的教育1898年改革*

Children and the Survival of China: Liang Qichao on
Education Before the 1898 Reform
Limin Bai
Late Imperial China, Volume 22, Number 2, December 2001, pp. 124-155 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/late.2001.0005
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/19540
[ Access provided at 19 Apr 2020 15:52 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

124 Limin Bai
CHILDREN AND THE SURVIVAL OF CHINA:

LIANG QICHAO ON EDUCATION BEFORE THE
1898 REFORM*
Limin Bai
On the eve of the 1898 Reform, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) advocated

changes to the traditional Chinese education of children which, he believed,
was hindering children’s intellectual development and would, consequently,
ruin China’s future. In 1896 Liang began publishing a series of articles en-
titled On Reforms (Bianfa tongyi) in Current Affairs (Shiwu bao). In this se-
ries of articles he touched upon a broad range of issues concerning education
(such as schools in general, teachers’ colleges, academic societies, the educa-
tion of women and children), arguing that education was the key to reform.
Liang’s view reflected the intellectual milieu of the second half of the nine-
teenth century. After the Opium War of the 1840s, many Chinese intellectuals
were aware of China’s weak position in the world. Especially in 1895, China’s
defeat in the Sino-Japanese War and the publication of Yan Fu’s translation of
Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics stirred cries for reforms in education
and institutional systems. Reformers and scholars who were sympathetic to
reforms started to question the effectiveness of traditional education and its
contribution to China’s future.
This intellectual milieu is very similar to that in the early Qing. Educa-
tional reformers of that time blamed the collapse of the Ming dynasty on
traditional education which only valued Confucian philosophy but overlooked
practical crafts. In their opinion, traditional Chinese education only produced
literati who might have been excellent in Neo-Confucian moral practice, or
had succeeded in the civil service examinations, but they had no practical
skills to benefit people in their daily life. When their country was in danger,
they could do nothing but kill themselves to show their loyalty.1
* This project was partly sponsored by an Internal Research Grant from Victoria University of Wellington.
I would like to thank Mrs. Sheila Davies for reading a draft of this article. Thanks also to two anonymous
readers, whose comments on an earlier draft helped me revise and improve this article.
1
Wang Zheng 1935–37:11.
Late Imperial China Vol. 22, No. 2 (December 2001): 124–155

© by the Society for Qing Studies
124
Children and the Survival of China 125
About two centuries later, history seemed to repeat itself, only this time
China did not face the collapse of a dynasty but the possible extinction of the
whole nation. It was in this context, on the eve of the 1898 Reform, that Liang
Qichao and his generation of scholars shared the same criticism of traditional
Chinese education with the seventeenth-century thinkers. Furthermore, they
determined to create a new school system which, they believed, was essential
to China’s survival.
In both Chinese and English literature, while much attention has been given
to Liang’s political theory and activities, few researchers have focused solely
on his educational ideas.2 To indicate how traditional child-rearing and edu-
cation were challenged by a crisis that threatened the survival of the whole
nation, this article concentrates on Liang Qichao’s proposed reforms of
children’s education and the new curriculum he designed before the 1898
Reform. It first examines Liang’s version of social Darwinism and the con-
nection he saw between the education of children and China’s fate. Then the
discussion focuses on Liang’s notion of “developing the child’s brain power
through education” which, from his social Darwinian perspective, was the
key to improving the Chinese race. Against his theoretical orientation and his
criticism of traditional Chinese education, the article looks in detail at Liang’s
curriculum, identifying the Western influence on his vision of modern educa-
tion for a new China. This study finally analyzes Liang’s emphasis on the
synthesis of Chinese-Western learning as reflected in his ideas of education,
and ends with a discussion of the impact of Liang’s proposed reforms in edu-
cation on the establishment of a modern Chinese school system.
A social-Darwinian perspective: children’s education and the fate of

China
Liang’s search for alternatives to traditional Chinese practice was partly
stimulated by information about Western education in missionary writings.3
For instance, he “specifically called upon the authority of [Timothy] Richard
to argue for educational reform”4 in his On Reforms. Among all Western na-
tions, Liang Qichao admired England most, as he saw England as the first
nation that had a modern polity as well as national power,5 so his term “West-
ern education” often referred specifically to English education.
2
For a study particularly focusing on Liang’s educational thought in the period of the 1898 Reform, see
Abe Yo 1959: 301–323.
3
This is evident in Liang’s Xixue shumubiao (Bibliography on Western Learning), which he compiled
in 1896.
4
Philip C. C. Huang 1972: 33. Except for his personal contact with Timothy Richard, however, Liang
seemed not to be involved with other missionaries (see Hao Chang 1971: 71–72).
5
This idea was well elaborated in his Xinmin shuo (New Citizen) and Xinshi xue (New Historiography).
For a further discussion, see Hao Chang 1971:160.
126 Limin Bai
Before the 1898 Reform Chinese intellectuals were still very much influ-
enced by the thesis of “Chinese Learning as substance (ti) and Western learn-
ing for practical use (yong).” The ti-yong formula was officially advocated by
Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909),6 one of the key figures in the modernization of
Chinese education. Both Zhang and Liang selected some parts of Western
education in attempting to create a new type of education for China, but their
selections were made against their own academic background and their feel-
ings towards religious practice in mission schools. Zhang was particularly
keen on modeling on Japan which, in his opinion, had already succeeded in
both adopting Western learning and preserving Confucianism. The Japanese
model was very appealing to Liang Qichao as well, especially after he fled to
Japan in the aftermath of the 1898 reform. At the time he was writing On
Reforms, however, his proposed curriculum was largely based on the model
of Western education.7
The superiority of Western education systems, according to Liang’s obser-
vation, was that (1) Westerners had thousands of new inventions each year,
but nothing was invented in China; (2) in the West, thousands of new schol-
arly works were published to address new findings and novel theories, but
none appeared in China; and (3) literacy rates in the West reached 80–90 %
but in China less than 30 –40 % of the population could read and write. After
listing these facts, Liang questioned if such huge differences between the
Chinese and Western people resulted from different talents endowed by na-
ture. If so, he further posed the question, how could Chinese students over-
seas achieve well and not be inferior to their Western peers? This suggested,
Liang asserted, that the intellectual faculties of the Chinese were equal to
those of Western people, but education for young children impeded the devel-
opment of Chinese people’s creativity.8 In other words, the huge gap between
China and the Western Powers was not due to differences in race but to differ-
ences in educational systems within which the education of children was a
crucial factor affecting the fate of a nation.9 To further buttress his argument,
Liang then re-interpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution by relating it to the
traditional Chinese “foetal education” (taijiao).
Liang Qichao learned Darwin’s theory of evolution from his acquaintance
with Yan Fu (1853–1921), who translated Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and
Ethics and Western political theories10 into Chinese. These translations circu-
lated widely among Chinese intellectuals, who were particularly alerted after
6
For a study of Zhang Zhidong, see Bays 1978.
7
For a discussion of Japanese influence on Liang, see Levenson 1965:50 (ft.30); and Hao Chang 1971:148.
8
Liang Qichao 1941 : 1.44.
9
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.40.
10
They are presented in such works as John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, Montesquieu’s Defence of the
Spirit of the Laws, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. For a study of Yan Fu, see Schwartz 1964.
learning the idea of “the survival of the fittest,” and began to see the only two
options for China as national extinction or reform.
According to Liang’s own account, he read the draft of Yan’s translation of
Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics in 1896,11 and he immediately applied this
new theory in his criticism and analysis of traditional Chinese education by
arguing that the defense of China should start with the defense of the Chinese
race, and the education of children is the key to improving the race.12 Based
on his interpretation of Darwin’s evolution, Liang made a close link between
China’s fate and the education of its children. His On Female Education (Lun
nüxue) and On the Education of Children (Lun youxue), two articles in the
series On Reforms, systematically elaborated this idea.
In Liang’s understanding of Darwin’s theory, propagation was a gradual
process of evolution, involving changes and improvements; this was how an-
thropoid apes evolved and became human beings, and barbarous nations be-
came civilized people. At the beginning of evolution, changes and improve-
ments seemed insignificant, but eventually they reached a great end. A person’s
intellect, physical form, and personality were formed under influences of both
genetic factors and environmental forces. Liang said that his understanding of
this idea came from Yan Fu, who in his letter explained:
According to the rules of biology, man’s mind, talent, physical form,

and habits were formed many generations ago; and then were in-
fluenced by man’s experience, such as what he saw and heard, as
well as his surroundings, such as friends, teachers, and environ-
ment.13
This explanation suggested that the genes parents inherited from their ances-
tors and then passed on to their offspring could affect the personalities of
many generations, and would even have an impact on the formation of a nation’s
character. Liang then employed the traditional Chinese “foetal education”
theory to argue further that inheritance was part of evolution and the mother’s
womb was where heredity and education combined.
To modern minds, it might be difficult to understand how “education could
begin in the womb,” and how this “early Chinese prejudice” could be used to
introduce the theory of evolution.14 But it was China’s problems that made
Liang Qichao, Yan Fu, and Kang Youwei (1858–1927) extremely interested
11
Liang Qichao 1941: 11.18. According to Hao Chang, Liang was not a close friend of Yan Fu, and their
acquaintance was primarily an intellectual one. See Hao Chang 1971: 64.
12
13
14
See Pusey 1983 : 100 –103.
128 Limin Bai
in Darwin, and they deliberately interpreted his theory of evolution to serve

their reform programs.15 This Chinese version of social Darwinism inevitably
complied with traditional Chinese ideas in which education was highly val-
ued for teaching people and transforming society. What interested them more
was not the original or real meanings of Darwin’s theory of evolution but how
it might help explain China’s weakness and awaken the Chinese people to the
grim reality. Under these circumstances, the traditional theory of “foetal edu-
cation” was borrowed to interpret Darwin’s evolution in Chinese terms.
“Foetal education” originally emphasised the influence of external forces
on the child’s physical and moral development. In early Chinese thought the
“external forces” included foetal environment, the community the child lives
in, and the socio-economic setting.
Foetal environment was believed by the ancient Chinese to have a signifi-
cant impact not only on the developing foetus but also on the child’s tempera-
ment and moral status after its birth and in its later life. This idea was said to
originate in the legendary period, but was elaborated in the Han period, when
pre-Han examples were frequently quoted in scholarly writings to confirm
and to develop the theory. Among these examples, the mothers of the legend-
ary kings of Wen and Cheng in the Zhou dynasty and the mother of Mencius
are the three most noteworthy cases. It was said that during their pregnancy
these three mothers all applied the disciplines to their own behavior in a most
strict way, such as holding their posture properly while standing and sitting;
seeing, hearing, and speaking no evil. This was believed to have contributed
to forming Mencius’ and the two sage kings’ personalities and moral character.16
These stories appear very foreign or even absurd to modern minds, yet they
are linked with a medical theory called waixiang neigan, namely that the five
senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—receive external phenomena
and then transmit them inside the body, and influence the body’s system. This
theory related to the traditional Chinese knowledge of the human body, which
was closely connected with traditional Chinese cosmogony. The creation of
the universe was attributed to Yin and Yang, which were responsible for “the
transformation to parenthood,” and were the “root and source of life and
death.”17 These two cosmic forces were also held to be the two regulators,
under which the human body, in response to the five elements (water, wood,
15
For Yan Fu in this period, as Benjamin Schwartz points out, Western learning meant primarily social
Darwinism: “It is the struggle for existence which leads to natural selection and survival of the fittest—and
hence, within the human realm, to the greatest realization of human capacities” (Schwartz 1964: 52–59).
As for Kang Youwei, his “espousal of Western concepts of historical progress and institutional reform
naturally implied an acceptance of the ideal of wealth and power as the primary political goal of China at
her present stage of history” (Hao Chang 1971: 52).
16
For the story of the mother of the King of Wen, see Liu Xiang 1994: 4: 50. For the story of the mother of
the king of Cheng, see Jia Yi 1986: 762. For the story of the mother of Mencius, see Han Ying 1936: 9:2b.
17
Huangdi Neijing, Suwen, 1936: 18.
metal, fire, and earth), had five viscera (zang)18 and six bowels (fu). Both
intellectual and emotional functions were held to depend on the five viscera,
in which the five climates were transformed to create the five sentiments (joy,
anger, sympathy, grief, and fear);19 and mental functions20 were harbored cor-
respondingly by the five viscera.21 Under this theory, a natural bond between
the mother’s womb and the foetus was emphasized. Zhu Zhenheng (1281–
1385), a prominent medical practitioner of the Yuan dynasty, elaborated this
idea. He pointed out that the foetus shared the same body with the mother, so
the mother’s improper diet and illness (including mental instability) were very
likely to contribute to foetal poison. Foetal poison would be transmitted in-
side the body to “contaminate” the life energy and blood; then the “contami-
nated” life energy and blood would damage the five viscera which, as the
“environment” for the foetus, would in turn affect not only the developing
child but also the child’s health in its first two years.22
The idea of “foetal education” was widely accepted as an authoritative
theory as well as a conventional belief, but some doubts were raised to chal-
lenge this theory: if the mother and her encounters with external phenomena
were so powerful and important in shaping a child’s future character, how
could Shun and Confucius become great sages, since Shun’s parents were
intractable, and Confucius’ father was an adulterer? Also, since an illegiti-
mate child like Confucius could grow up to be a sage, it might be suggested
that “foetal education” was not so vital to children’s futures.23
Nevertheless, foetal poison was no doubt a serious threat to children’s lives
and health, so the theory of foetal education often urged pregnant women to
be cautious about their diet and lifestyle. This theory also laid a foundation
for serious concerns about the physical and moral qualities of wet-nurses, as it
was believed that after giving birth, the life energy and blood of the woman
went up to form the milk which then became a crucial channel to transmit not
only physical attributes or diseases but also moral character from the mother
or wet-nurse to the child. Therefore, from the Han throughout the Qing dy-
18
They are the heart, the spleen, the lungs, the liver, and the kidneys.
19
Huangdi Neijing, Suwen, 1936:16. For an English translation, see Veith 1966 :117.
20
They are the divine spirit (shen), the animal spirits (po), the soul and the spiritual faculties (hun), ideas
and opinions (yi ),will power and ambition (zhi ).
21
Veith 1966: 208.
22
Zhu Zhenheng 1935–37: 8. In contemporary society, pregnant women are told of the possible impact
on the foetus if they drink and smoke, or worst of all use drugs. On this point, the ancient Chinese advice
on “foetal poison” is similar to this warning.
23
Zhang Hua 1990: 34–5.
130 Limin Bai
nasty writers about infant care repeatedly urged parents to examine the physi-
cal and moral qualities of wet-nurses carefully.24
Liang Qichao translated these traditional concerns and practices into an
emphasis on the importance of the mother’s physical fitness and educational
level in the making of a strong and intelligent child. To his knowledge, West-
ern powers all tried to develop their military forces, so women in these coun-
tries were “ordered to engage in calisthenics” to ensure they would produce
strong and healthy children.25 Traditional “foetal education” advised Chinese
women to be careful about external phenomena they perceived. Liang instead
advised physical exercise. The underlying principle, however, remained the
same: the mother’s fitness would be transmitted to the child through her life
energy and blood. “Foetal education” in this context was interpreted as an
urgent practice which, in social Darwinian terms, would contribute to the
making of physically strong children who then would grow into the valiant
soldiers that China so desperately needed. From this perspective, Liang ar-
gued for the significance of “foetal education” to China’s survival.
Then Liang further related women’s education to the nation’s evolution.
He pointed to the fact that Chinese children before the age of ten were gener-
ally under the care of women, most of whom were uneducated and knew only
trivial things. Under these circumstances, the only education children could
receive from their mothers or their care-givers, Liang went on, was to be
taught to achieve success in the civil service examinations, and then to obtain
emolument, to inherit family property, and to start a family. As the Chinese
were brought up in this way generation after generation, they cared about
nothing but private gain, and became shameless, stubborn, and brutal. In this
context, Liang argued that the education of children was not just about how
children were brought up, but was about how the nation’s character was formed,
and how the nation’s fate was decided.26
A comparative approach: Liang’s criticism of zhinao education

The term zhinao means “blocking the development of one’s brain.” After
drawing a sharp contrast between the rote learning central to traditional Chi-
nese education and the emphasis on understanding in Western education, Liang
Qichao, like many reformers before the 1898 Reform, argued that the existing
24
In her Technology and Gender, apart from some discussion of traditional Chinese theories of qi, the
Five Elements, and yin and yang (e.g. pp. 302–3), Francesca Bray has a brief introduction to various ideas
about physical heredity in late imperial China. Some of these ideas laid an emphasis on the father’s qi in the
infant’s make-up, while the mother’s contribution to the child’s constitution was well acknowledged (See
Bray 1997: 344–45). For a discussion of breast milk, the mother’s responsibility, and wet nurses’ role in
infant care, see Furth 1987: 21–3.
25
Liang Qichao 1941:1.41.
26
education system failed to develop the child’s brain power which, from his
Darwinian perspective, was crucial to China’s creative adaptation if it was to
avoid extinction.
According to the information he received, Liang was extremely impressed
by the Western notion of education, in which the attributes of children were
well considered and teaching did not proceed ahead of the stages in the child’s
intellectual and physical development. This basic principle, Liang noticed,
was applied to all aspects of education for children. For instance, in the West
the procedure of learning how to read and write was step by step: first to
recognize words connected to things which children encountered in daily life,
then to understand the meaning of these words, and later to make sentences
by using these words, and finally to write essays.27 In China, Liang described,
children were forced to learn Confucian classics from the very beginning of
schooling, chanting sentences such as “The Way of the higher learning is to
illustrate illustrious virtues” (daxue zhi dao zai ming mingde). Sentences like
this were so abstract that even scholars from the Han to the Song could not
clearly define the term mingde in all their writings. If so, Liang questioned,
how could one expect young children to understand it? This kind of content,
Liang remarked, discouraged children from study; even worse, it provoked
hatred towards their teachers because of the hardship pupils suffered in the
process of learning.28
Why did traditional Chinese education force young children to study Con-
fucian classics rather than other useful subjects that related to daily life? The
civil examination system was the driving force, Liang said. The aim and con-
tent of education were very much affected by the temptation of the gains from
success in the examinations.29 Under the civil examination system, children
were driven to memorize the Four Books even before they had learned how to
read; and then they had to learn how to compose a particular article in accor-
dance with the format of “eight-legged essays.” The existing education, Liang
criticized, was zhinao, hindering children’s intellectual development.30
Western textbooks, Liang pointed out, were written in the colloquial lan-
guage and some were in the form of folk songs or ballads. Children would
chant and understand textbooks of this kind easily. In the teaching process,
much attention was given to children’s ability to understand; astronomy and
scientific subjects, for example, were taught through performing tricks,31 and
27
28
Liang Qichao 1941:1.45 –46.
29
30
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.46–47. For a brief history of intellectual efforts to reform the civil examination
system before and after 1898, see Elman 2000: 578–608.
31
The original phrase Liang used is yan xifa, which perhaps referred to experiments used in teaching
sciences in Western schools.
132 Limin Bai
history was taught in the colloquial language that had a style similar to Chi-
nese popular entertainment.32 These methods, Liang said, would attract chil-
dren to the study of these subjects, and would make all these courses more
enjoyable. In contrast, the content of Chinese elementary education was not
in a form children could understand easily, so teachers had to force children to
memorize texts in order to meet the requirements of the civil examinations.33
Liang’s arguments represented the views of many late nineteenth-century
reformers and educators. With a much better understanding of the human brain
than their predecessors, they proposed changes to both content and teaching
method in elementary education, so as to help effectively develop children’s
brain power, and then to improve the Chinese race.
The Chinese understanding of the functions of the human brain was associ-
ated with the mission publications on Western medicine, some of which intro-
duced Western knowledge of the human body into China. Before the late six-
teenth century, the Chinese thought that the heart was the organ for thinking,
and the brain, like the marrow and the bones, was one of the storing organs
produced by the earth and hence belonging to the Yin.34 In the early Chinese
philosophers’ writings, the term xin or heart was used loosely and sometimes
confusingly—referring either to mind, or to feelings, or to innate behavior.35
Joannes Terrenz (1576–1630), with the help of a Chinese scholar named Bi
Gongchen, published A Western Account of the Human Body (Taixi renshen
shuogai) in 1643, stating that human intellect was not stored in the heart but
was connected with the development of the brain. The idea initially shocked
Chinese literati,36 but then was gradually accepted by some Chinese medical
prectitioners such as Li Shizhen (1598–1593), an outstanding Chinese doctor
of the time, and scholars such as Jin Sheng (1598–1644), who studied West-
32
The original phrase Liang used is shuogu ci, which is a type of story-telling consisting of talking,
singing, and playing instruments and drums.
33
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.45–46.
34
See Nei Ching Su Wen, 3.10; 2.5; & Veith 1966: 145, 117.
35
Among these early philosophers, Xun Zi appeared to be aware of this confusion and sought to distin-
guish human innate capacity from virtue, feelings, and knowledge. He argued that a spontaneous response
to stimulus was human physiological nature which, like the five senses (human biological nature), was not
acquired or learned but inherent. Likes and dislikes, delight and anger, grief and joy, were human emotions
(qing) not human nature, and the activity of the heart-mind (lü) enabled man to make a choice from these
emotions. Xun Zi concluded that human nature, emotions and the use of the mind were different in terms of
their nature and functions, and should not be mixed up. After clarifying these terms and their uses, Xun Zi
further explained that zhi, the capacity to know, was the special faculty of the human species. According to
him, the mind possessed an overall understanding, but it had to always rely on the senses to receive the
data. To use human beings’ special capacity to acquire knowledge was where human wisdom came from.
Here Xun Zi clearly distinguished between the human innate capacity and virtue, feelings and knowledge,
but failed to recognize the brain as the organ responsible for human intellectual capacity. See Xun zi 1936:
309–310; for English translation, see Watson 1963 :142–3.
36
In his preface to Terrenz’s book, Bi Gongchen admitted that it was difficult to accept this theory. See
Xu Zongze 1949 : 304.
ern calendar making with Franciscus Sambiasi (1582–1649), one of the Jesu-
its missionaries in China. Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), the seventeenth-century
philosopher, was also aware of this new idea, and recorded it in his writing:
man’s intelligence depended on the quality of the brain.37 This recognition of
brain power allowed some seventeenth-century thinkers, such as Wang Fuzhi
(1619–1692), to re-interpret the early Chinese concept of man.38
However, Wang Fuzhi and other educational reformers at that time did not
yet perceive education as a significant means to develop brain power. Their
better understanding of the human brain seemed only to enhance traditional
beliefs in children’s memory capacity and to confirm the use of rote memori-
zation in the teaching process. According to a traditional Chinese theory, be-
fore the age of fifteen children lacked understanding but had excellent memo-
ries. So it was recommended that young children memorize as much as they
could; they were specifically required to learn about two thousand basic char-
acters during their first stage of learning.
This idea was formed, developed, and practiced in elementary education
for many centuries. This can be demonstrated by looking at The Trimetrical
Classic (Sanzi jing), One Hundred Surnames (Baijia xing), and One Thou-
sand Characters (Qianzi wen), the three most popular primers in late imperial
China. These three primers were all produced before the Song dynasty (960–
1279 A.D), and in Ming-Qing times they were employed as a series (with the
abbreviated title San, bai, qian ) for teaching and learning characters. The
characters in these three books total 2,720. Since some characters appeared
more than once, they actually contain about 2,000 different characters.39
This traditional pedagogical approach was widely accepted and practiced
in the education of children. Take the Explanations of Characters for Chil-
dren (Wenzi mengqiu) as an example. This tiny book, written by Wang Yun
(1784–1854), was published in 1838. As an eminent scholar in the School of
Evidential Research, Wang Yun emphasized the importance of learning char-
acters in elementary training. In his opinion, “It is not very difficult to recog-
37
Fang Yizhi 1884: 3.10b.
38
Wang Fuzhi made an explicit comparison between the human infant and the animal newborn, pointing
out that the infant’s incompetence at walking, eating, speaking and its need to be taken care of were actu-
ally the unique capacity of man, as these imperfections provided human beings with the possibility and the
potential to develop (ke jin zhi neng). This was because, Wang continued, man had the intellect organ—the
brain—which would allow human beings to outgrow all the limitations shared with animals, while animals
were incapable of doing so (see Wang Fuzhi 1975: 458–9). Based on this knowledge, Wang Fuzhi further
developed Mencius’ and Xun Zi’s concept of xing, but placed the emphasis on man’s capacity to learn,
saying that human nature was sheng, by which man was able to develop himself every day and to transform
himself from imperfection to perfection through learning (see Wang Fuzhi 1976: 63). This process, which
Wang Fuzhi expressed as “producing and developing everyday” (risheng richeng), is similar to a certain
extent to the theory of Erik Erikson who believes that “people continue to grow and change right through
their lives, from birth to death” (see Nixon & Gould, 1996:13).
39
Zhang Zhigong 1964: 26.
134 Limin Bai
nize these two thousand [basic] characters [presented in his book] when chil-
dren are four or five years old.”40 According to modern psychology, it may
sound incredible that a child at four or five was able to master about two
thousand Chinese characters. But the Chinese were very confident in children’s
capacity to memorize, and memorizing and reciting were designed as the ba-
sic process for elementary training.
Interestingly, before Wang Yun wrote this primer, Wang Qingren (1768–
1831), who is regarded as the first Chinese anatomist, published the Yilin
gaicuo (Corrections of Errors in Chinese Medical Writings) that corrected
many Chinese misunderstandings of the human body, including the brain. In
his Naosui shuo (On the Human Brain), Wang Qingren contended that the
human memory capacity was determined by the quality of the brain: infants
and toddlers lacked good memory skills because their brains had not yet fully
developed, and aged people gradually lost their memories because their brains
shrank.41
What Wang Qingren said here, as mentioned earlier, was already accepted
by some Chinese medical specialists and philosophers in the early seventeenth
century. At that time, however, the idea did not spread. It was not until the
nineteenth century that the knowledge of Western anatomy was systemically
introduced to the Chinese. At the same time, more and more Chinese people
in the treaty ports, such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Ningbo, turned to Western
medicine as an alternative to the traditional Chinese medicine. This trend then
helped the promotion of missionary books on Western medicine, such as the
New Theory of the Human Body (Quanti xinlun), written by Benjamin Hobson
(1816–1873). In his book, Hobson particularly emphasized that the human
brain, as the headquarters of the human body, was in charge of the functions
of the whole bodily system. Hobson’s book enjoyed greater popularity than
Terrenz’s, and Hobson was pleased that Chinese literati “all know this is a
useful book.”42
Within this context, we may see Wang Qingren’s work as a marker of change:
by the late nineteenth century more educators and scholars had understood
the function of the human brain, and had begun to see the significance of
developing brain power through education and the harmfulness of rote learn-
ing in the teaching process. So it is not surprising that Wang Yun stressed the
necessity of mastering at least two thousand basic characters on the one hand;
on the other hand, he also realized that “pupils are human beings not pigs or
dogs,”43 and teachers should not drive them to memorize and recite books
and characters all day.
40
Wang Yun 1971: 3.
41
Wang Qingren 1849:1.23.
42
Hobson’s Preface to On Western Medicine (Xiyi lüelun), Shanghai, 1857, p.1.
43
Li Guojun et al 1990: 3: 485.
Liang’s criticism of mechanical memorization was linked to his critique of

Chinese science and technology. He said that in traditional Chinese learning,
there were some branches of knowledge similar to subjects in Western learn-
ing: Chinese dixue was similar to Western geography, and names and knowl-
edge of ancient gongshi were somewhat close to Western architecture. How-
ever, Chinese scholars only focused on searching for the original meanings of
words in historical documents and Confucian classics. When this method was
also employed in teaching children, young pupils were then required just to
learn all the archaic knowledge by heart, but were not encouraged to explore
their visual experience and to master practical knowledge that would benefit
their daily life. In this way, children’s minds were developed for only one
function, memorizing mechanically, and their knowledge was limited to se-
lected ancient books. This was why, Liang concluded, Westerners were able
to invent so many new machines (e.g. the steam engine was invented through
drawing inspiration from boiling water), and create new ideas (e.g. the theory
of gravity was inspired by falling apples), but none of this happened in China.44
Furthermore, in the opinion of Liang Qichao and other late nineteenth-
century thinkers, the harmfulness of rote memorization lay not only in imped-
ing children’s intellectual development but also in producing thousands of
useless literati, whose only weapon against the Western invaders was the “eight-
legged essay.” Worst of all, these well-trained literati did not even have the
basic skills for their own survival.45 Liang believed that the education young
children received was responsible for producing more useless literati, and
“unqualified teachers” would destroy China. He thus contended that the solu-
tion for China’s crisis was to start with the defense of the Chinese race, and
the defense of the Chinese race should start with resolving the problem of
unqualified teachers.46 Here the “unqualified teachers” were actually the
epitome of traditional Chinese education as a whole.
Liang’s proposed curriculum: a vision of modern education for children

In order to highlight Liang Qichao’s vision of modern education for chil-
dren, this section focuses on Liang’s proposed curriculum, including a school
timetable he designed and teaching material he advocated. Liang mainly ad-
dressed two key issues in elementary education: literacy and knowledge struc-
ture.
Liang and his intellectual counterparts were very concerned about China’s
high rate of illiteracy. In order to catch up with Western nations in terms of
44
45
This view was expressed by many scholars before the 1898 Reform, such as Lin Shu (1852–1924) in
his Xunmeng gejue (Songs for Educating Children). Lin Shu 1898: 11a–13b.
46
136 Limin Bai
literacy rates, Liang clearly identified the basic task of elementary education
as teaching children literacy skills. For this purpose, he recommended the use
of Wang Yun’s Explanations of Characters for Children in teaching children
two thousand basic characters, and the practice of calligraphy was part of the
course.47
Liang also agreed with other scholars, such as Ma Jianzhong (?–1899), that
the lack of grammar made the Chinese language difficult to master and this
contributed to a far lower literacy rate in China than in Western countries.48
Therefore, Liang inserted grammar into his curriculum, and advised the use
of The Ma Grammar (Mashi wentong), the first Chinese work on the sub-
ject.49 The Ma Grammar was written under Western influence, as grammar in
a modern definition was new to the Chinese.50 Both Liang and Ma believed
that the study of The Ma Grammar would be beneficial to young students
who were studying either Chinese or Western languages.
China’s low rate of literacy, in Liang’s view, was also related to rote learn-
ing. To find alternatives to traditional Chinese teaching methods, Liang advo-
cated the adoption of a Western pedagogical approach. First he proposed the
use of textbooks written in rhyme (gejue shu). This proposal was not new, as
most traditional Chinese primers were in rhyme. However, Liang was dissat-
isfied with the contents of these primers which, in his opinion, did not contain
enough new knowledge. Therefore, he argued that new primers should in-
clude the essence of all kinds of knowledge—from classical learning, to his-
tory, to astronomy, to geography, and other scientific subjects such as botany
and microbiology—and all the texts should be rhymed.51 In his scheme, books
in rhyme would be taught in the first class every morning.52
Along with texts in the format of songs or ballads, Liang then promoted the
use of the colloquial language (baihua)53 in the writing of textbooks. Accord-
ing to his information about Western education, teaching material of this kind
had a story-telling style which made learning more enjoyable.54 Moreover,
Liang held that the linguistic separation between written form and spoken
47
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.58. The practice of calligraphy also included the writing of foreign languages.
48
Ma Jianzhong believed that grammar made difficult Western languages easy for Western children to
master literacy skills; so in his Ma Grammar he followed Latin grammar step by step to elaborate the rules
in classical Chinese, hoping this would help Chinese children to learn how to read and write easily. See Ma
Jianzhong 1983: 13–4.
49
50
Ma Jianzhong said that wentong meant “grammar” in Western terms. He acknowledged that the Chi-
nese language had grammar, but no scholars before him had made efforts to systematically explicate the
grammatical rules. See Ma Jianzhong 1983: 14.
51
52
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.57
53
Baihua was often used in folk literature which, however, was intellectually despised.
54
Liang Qichao 1941: 1. 54.
language was responsible for China’s high rate of illiteracy, as classical Chi-
nese made literacy a monopoly for the elite, and had prevented many Chinese
people from mastering literacy skills. This linguistic separation consequently
had become an obstacle in improving the Chinese race through education. To
change this situation and to extend literacy education to the majority of the
population, Liang emphasized the use of the colloquial language in elemen-
tary education,55 and a late afternoon class was allocated for teaching text-
books in colloquial language. In this class children would be allowed to read
whatever they liked.56
Third, in order to place an emphasis on understanding instead of rote learn-
ing, Liang suggested adopting catechism as a teaching device. Catechism, the
question-answer format, was originally used in Christian education for reli-
gious instruction. Liang perhaps knew this format through reading mission-
ary writings, some of which answered questions concerning the political sys-
tem, history, and technology in the West. Some missionary textbooks were
also written in this question-answer format, such as A Concise Geography for
Children (Dili biantong lüezhuan), by Walter Henry Medhurst (1796–1857);57
and Western Astronomy in the Format of Questions-answers (tianwen wenda)
published by Andrew Patton Happer (1818–1894) in Ningbo in 1849.58 By
1896, when Liang wrote On Reforms, missionaries had published a great num-
ber of books which covered not only the Christian religion but almost all
aspects of Western learning. Liang’s Bibliography on Western Learning indi-
cates that he was familiar with missionary publications, and appreciated those
in question-answer format very much. He believed that by adopting this dia-
logue format all kinds of useful knowledge could be contained in about thirty
books, which then would enable all children, even those who were unintelli-
gent, to be equipped with sound and useful knowledge before they reached
fifteen. Besides, out-of-date school teachers could use them to refresh their
own knowledge.59 So he arranged the study of texts in question-answer for-
mat in the second morning class, emphasizing that it was not necessary for
students to memorize, but to understand the meanings of the text.60
As well as his effort to promote literacy education, Liang stressed the im-
portance of broadening the content of education. He strongly recommended
55
56
57
The book, published in Malacca in 1819, contains 60 questions and answers in eight sections about
four continents—Asia, Europe, America and Africa, and countries such as China, England, Russia, Ger-
many, America, India, and Egypt. Xiong 1994: 115–116.
58
Ningbo by that time had become a publishing center of American missionaries. Happer’s book has
twenty-two sections and each section contains ten to twenty questions, introducing basic knowledge of
Western astronomy to readers. Xiong 1994: 173–175.
59
60
138 Limin Bai
the study of foreign languages and mathematics, as he was informed that these
were the two key subjects in Western elementary education. In his under-
standing, acquisition of languages at an early age would be easier than in the
child’s later life, and arithmetic would be useful for children’s future careers,
no matter what occupations they chose.61
At the end of the nineteenth century, learning Western languages was no
longer new to Chinese society, and people’s attitude toward Western languages
and mission schools had changed dramatically. In the 1850s and 1860s mis-
sionary schools had difficulty attracting Chinese students; those who enrolled
in these schools usually came from poor families, and were by and large at-
tracted by free food and accommodation. At that time, even students in the
government schools, such as the Tongwen guan in Beijing (established in
1862) and Shanghai (established in 1863),62 still focused only on knowledge
useful to success in the civil service examinations, and few were interested in
foreign languages and technology.63 In the 1870s and 1880s, however, West-
ern languages and other subjects gradually became fashionable, and mission
schools in trading ports, such as Fuzhou and Shanghai, were very popular. In
the 1880s, missionary schools no longer needed to provide their students with
food and accommodation, and some even charged quite expensive tuition fees.
Even so, there were still more applicants for enrollment than the schools could
actually accept. And those who were admitted to mission schools, such as the
Zhongxi shuyuan (Chinese-Western Academy), were normally from wealthy
families and were only interested in Western subjects.64
Although the study of foreign languages appeared fashionable at that time,
Liang was dissatisfied with the situation that, to most learners, the purpose of
mastering a foreign language was to participate in trade with overseas compa-
nies or to work for foreign firms in China. According to his ideal, a “new
citizen” should be equipped with both Chinese and Western learning. But
foreign language schools of the time were only interested in meeting the needs
of the import-export trade. This, in Liang’s words, was the practice of trades-
men and Westerners’ servants (shijing yangyong). Liang despised this prac-
61
62
Tongwen guan literally means School of Combined Learning. W.A.P. Martin called it the Tung-wen
College (Martin 1896: 301). For an excellent study of the Tongwen guan in both Beijing and Shanghai, see
Biggerstaff 1961: 94–165. Also, Xiong 1994: 301–349.
63
M.J. O’Brien, one of the foreign instructors in the Beijing Tongwen guan, complained in 1869 of the
poor quality of the students and of their lack of interest in their foreign studies: they gave their time and
energy to Chinese learning as it would give them “a status and position in the country” (Biggerstaff 1961:145–
146). The same complaints occurred in Shanghai: some students “had accustomed themselves to dictating
their own scholarly ranking regardless of achievement” (Biggerstaff 1961:161).
64
Zhongxi shuyuan was established in Shanghai in 1881, by Young J. Allen (1836–1907). For an intro-
duction to Allen’s life and his work in China, see Candler 1931: 108, 123, 148; about the Chinese-Western
Academy, see Xiong 1994: 616–620.
tice, and encouraged children to learn Latin first. After mastery of Latin, he
believed, children would find it much easier to study English and French.65
This proposal was a rejection of the yangwu yondong (Westernization move-
ment), which only paid attention to Western firearms, technology, and mate-
rial well-being which, in Liang’s opinion, were not the essence of Western
learning. In his later article New Citizen (Xinmin shuo), Liang further eluci-
dated this view, maintaining that new citizens ought to be versed in Western
learning and then to use it to make China as “civilized” as the West. For this
purpose, his school timetable allocated a daily class for foreign languages,
and original foreign textbooks for children were recommended to be used in
teaching.66
To teach arithmetic in elementary schooling was not a novelty in curricu-
lum reform, because as early as in the seventeenth century Yan Yuan (1635–
1704) and Li Gong (1659–1733) had made this suggestion. It was not new
either that Liang called upon the authority of the original Confucian educa-
tion to argue the necessity of teaching arithmetic at an elementary level.67
Nevertheless, Liang invoked this tradition, specifically suggesting that chil-
dren over the age of eight should be taught how to count in their head (xinsuan),
and then gradually written calculation (bisuan), and basic geometry, algebra,
and infinitesimal calculus, and then they would be able to claim themselves as
specialists in the area (chouren)68 before reaching the age of fifteen.69 There-
fore, the third class in his school timetable was to focus on mathematics and
maps (i.e. the knowledge of geography)—math on the dates with an odd num-
ber and maps on the dates with an even number.70
65
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.56. Perhaps Liang’s suggestion of learning Latin was somewhat under the influ-
ence of Ma Xiangbo (1840–1939) and Ma Jianzhong, whom Liang became acquainted with in 1896. Al-
though Liang and the Ma brothers regarded each other highly, Ma Xiangbo was very concerned about the
young Liang, who had only superficial knowledge of modern Western political philosophy. He thus ad-
vised Liang to study a European language. Liang took the advice and studied Latin under Ma Jianzhong in
the Ma brothers’ residence. See Hayhoe and Lu Yongling 1996: 35–36.
66
67
According to the Record of Rites (Liji), arithmetic was part of elementary education. However, no
particular primers served for instruction in arithmetic from the Tang through the Qing, and in later educa-
tional documents no more details of teaching and learning arithmetic can be found beyond that provided by
the Record of Rites. Therefore, scholars who attempted to promote arithmetic in elementary schooling
usually quoted what had been written in this particular classic. So did Liang. He claimed that in the original
Confucian education the knowledge of numerals and calculation was as important as the skill of reading
and writing. Thanks to later changes which regarded this kind of knowledge as insignificant skills, scholars
did not pay any attention to it. Because arithmetic and mathematics were not taught in school, they were
seen as a kind of extraordinary learning (juexue) in the Qing. See Liang Qichao 1941: 1.56.
68
"Chouren” referred to people who were knowledgeable in the areas of traditional Chinese mathemat-
ics and astronomy. For a further discussion of the concept of chouren, see Bai Limin 1995: 23–61.
69
70
140 Limin Bai
There was a correlation between Liang’s effort to broaden the content of

elementary education and his emphasis on the synthesis of Western and Chi-
nese learning. In his view, without the framework of Chinese learning a pure
pursuit of Western learning would lead only to “the emergence of Chinese
compradors and business go-betweens working slavishly for the Westerners.”71
This view was reflected in his argument for the continuing use of menjing
shu, a traditional Chinese format in which authors briefly introduced books to
readers according to the four categories.72 Liang said that no one could be
exhaustive in book reading, but encyclopedic books might be able to compen-
sate as they could brief readers on books in all categories, including ancient
and recent books as well as those newly translated Western works. The most
comprehensive work of this kind was The Essentials of the Encyclopaedia
(Siku tiyao), but it was too large for young children. So Liang urged scholars
to compile a new kind of introductory book especially for children and to
provide them with a broader view of knowledge, containing traditional Chi-
nese as well as Western learning, and ancient as well as contemporary schol-
arship.73
At the same time, Liang was particularly amazed at the comprehensive
features of the Western-style dictionary (mingwu shu). He believed that books
in this form could be extremely useful for anyone who, after learning some
basic skills of reading and writing, could study all kinds of knowledge just
through reading the dictionary. In Liang’s time the Western-style dictionary
had already been introduced into China, and the term zidian had already been
adopted to refer to this Western format,74 but he preferred the term mingwu
shu, as he saw the function of a dictionary as introducing things of the world
to readers rather than only words.75
While emphasizing the importance of broadening the content of education,
Liang pointed to the necessity of taking children’s physical development into
account. In Western education, he noticed, daily teaching would not be more
than three hours, and music and gymnastics were part of the curriculum.76
Although Liang did not mention the curriculum of mission schools in China,
he perhaps was aware of their practice, because popular mission schools of
71
See Hao Chang 1971: 119.
72
They are classics (jing), history (shi), scholarly works (zi), and literary writings (ji).
73
74
The earliest Western-style dictionary was the Chinese–English Dictionary (Hua-Ying zidian), com-
piled and published by Robert Morrison (1782–? ) in 1822. In 1859 John Chalmers (1825–1899) published
his English-Cantonese Dictionary (Ying-Yüe zidian), and between 1885 and 1890, John Fryer (1839–1928)
published several dictionaries in his Gezhi shushi, or Gezhi Publishing House, which was established in
1885. See Xiong 1994: 100, 147, 577–588.
75
76
the time, such as Girls’ School of Zhengjiang (Zhengjiang nüshu), taught music
and gymnastics from the first year through the final year.77 So he arranged
gymnastic practice as the first afternoon class. He even allowed children to
play freely after formal practice,78 as he was informed that, after school, chil-
dren in the West were encouraged to play together.79
Moreover, Liang further related the issue of the child’s physical develop-
ment to “survival of the fittest.” He said that Western education aimed to help
children grow up physically strong so that in the future they could all be sol-
diers to defend their countries. This was why, he believed, gymnastics was
part of their school curriculum.80 In China, Liang complained, pupils were
like teachers’ prisoners who had to sit upright all day long in a room without
fresh air. This was not only harmful to children’s physical development but
also prevented them from enjoying education, because they regarded school
as a prison.81 From this perspective, Liang affirmed that traditional Chinese
elementary education obstructed children’s physical, intellectual, and psycho-
logical development more than helping them grow up happily and healthily.
Liang’s synthesis of Chinese and Western learning

Liang ‘s proposed curriculum was a reflection of his emphasis on the syn-
thesis of indigenous Chinese learning with Western ideas and practices. How-
ever, his synthesis was not a simple matter of “smuggling” Western learning
into a traditional Chinese framework, but an important process of creating
new Chinese thought which, he believed, was essential for China’s progress,
because “the lack of thought” in China resulted in the lack of inventions.82
From this perspective, Liang insisted on the indivisible nature of the new
structure of scholarship, in which neither Western knowledge nor traditional
Chinese learning should be ignored. He expressed this idea consistently from
1896 (when he wrote On Elementary Education) to the eve of the 1898 Re-
form (when he drafted the regulations for Jingshi Daxuetang—the early pro-
totype of Beijing University). 83
Liang’s persistence in emphasizing the synthesis of Western and Chinese
learning related to the Chinese attitude to Western influence before the 1898
Reform. At that time there was no “outright opposition” to Western knowl-
77
For a list of subjects taught at Zhengjiang nüshu, see Xiong 1994: 298.
78
79
80
81
Liang Qichao 1941: 1.49
82
See Liang Qichao 1941: 4.41b–46.
83
Liang drafted the regulations for Jingshi Daxuetang in 1898. See Zhu Youhuan 1983–9: 2: 656.
142 Limin Bai
edge (such as Yang Guanxian’s rejection in the 1600s),84 as government

schools, such as the Tongwen guan in both Beijing and Shanghai, had already
been established to teach Western languages and subjects in science and tech-
nology. Chinese views on Western knowledge gradually changed along with
the prevalence of missionary publications and education facilities over the
period of the 1840s and 1890s. For instance, early in the 1800s the Chinese
used the word yi (barbarian) to denegrate anything not Chinese. Then the
word xi (West, or western) was adopted to indicate that Western languages
were like any other Chinese dialects (Tongwen guan in Shanghai was called
“Guang fangyan guan,” literally meaning “the college of extending dialects”).
Compared to the word yi, the word xi reflected progress in terms of the Chi-
nese attitude to Western learning; on the other hand, it reflected a Chinese
view of the world in which China was at the center. It was Timothy Richard
(1845–1919), one of the most outstanding missionary educators, who in 1887
wrote a pamphlet entitled Qiguo xinxue beiyao (Essential information about
modern education in seven countries), introducing the educational systems of
England, France, Germany, Russia, America, Japan, and India to Chinese re-
formers and government officials such as Li Hongzhang (1823–1901) and
Zhang Zhidong. Richard used the word xin (new) instead of xi (West) to refer
to education and knowledge from the West. Then Zhang Zhidong followed
suit in his Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learning), advocating the study of
both the old (including the Four books, Five Classics, Chinese history, gov-
ernment, and maps) and the new knowledge (including political systems, tech-
nology, and history of the West). Zhang then advocated “the old learning for
substance (ti) and the new subjects for practical use (yong).”85
The substitution of the word xin for xi was not simply a linguistic exercise.
The change actually allowed Western subjects to enter the framework of Chi-
nese learning. For Zhang Zhidong, with a certain degree of Western skills as
supplements, the preservation of traditional Chinese learning could be achieved.
For Liang Qichao and other like-minded reformers, this word “new” gave
them a base for the integration of both traditional Chinese learning and West-
ern knowledge so as to create the new Chinese thought. This approach is
noticeable in Liang’s proposed curriculum.86
84
Yang Guangxian (1597–1669) attacked Christianity and the calendar devised by the Jesuit astronomer,
Adam Schall (1591–1666). For a brief introduction to Yang’s life and his conflict with the Jesuits, see
Hummel 1943–1944: 889–892; also Rule 1986: 98–100; Young 1983: Chapter 5.
85
Quoted from Shu 1980: 3: 977.
86
Liang in 1920 stated that the ti-yong formula was “regarded as a keynote” before the 1898 Reform, but
there was a difference of opinion between men such as Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong and men such as
Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Tan Sitong (1866–1898): the former “positively would not admit that the
Europeans and Americans, apart from their ability to make [guns], explore [terrain], sail [ships], and drill
[troops], had any other kinds of knowledge,” whereas the latter attempted to found “a new school of learning
which would be neither Chinese nor Western but in fact both Chinese and Western” (Liang 1959: 113).
In order to create the new Chinese thought, Liang did not just repeat the ti-
yong formula, but also carefully separated the Christian religion from West-
ern secular learning. To Liang “even if there were definite grounds on which
Chinese culture compared unfavorably with Western secular learning, this
did not mean that similar grounds could also be found for denigrating Confu-
cianism as a moral-religion system in comparison with Christianity.”87 There-
fore, while integrating Western elements into his new curriculum, Liang modi-
fied many details of the Western education system. For example, he used the
“ten-days” as a study period instead of the “week”: on the tenth day students
were allowed to have one day off and to bathe themselves.88 Evidently, this
was Liang’s subtle rejection of Christian practice, as the term “week” was
introduced into China associated with the Christian religion. Similarly, the
form of Sunday worship in Liang’s design was changed to a gathering to
worship Confucius and to sing a song praising Confucianism.89 He also pro-
posed that every morning school start with a ceremony where both children
and teachers sang a song to praise Confucianism; every afternoon, the school
formally ended by holding an assembly where both teachers and students sang
a patriotic song. As well as this, students would annually have ten days holi-
day—five days for celebrating the birth of Confucius and the other five days
for the emperor’s birthday.90
These modifications, on the surface, appeared to be Liang’s struggle to
preserve traditional Chinese practice, such as xili (practice of ritual or cer-
emony) which was a significant part of traditional Chinese education. At a
deeper level, however, this is not a vestige of Chinese tradition but an indica-
tion that Liang Qichao, like his teacher Kang Youwei, endeavored to invent a
religious practice that would parallel Christian worship. Liang’s concept of
baojiao, or “preserving the faith,”91 and the modifications he made in his
proposed curriculum coincided with Kang Youwei’s intention to make “Con-
fucianism a national religion, with its own holidays, empire-wide network of
churches and missionaries.”92 Such intentions indicate their acceptance of the
87
See Hao Chang 1971: 117.
88
89
90
91
For a discussion of Liang’s concept of baojiao, see Chang 1971: 114–120.
92
Cohen 1978: 588. Liang changed his view on the matter after the failure of the Reform. In 1902 and
1915 he expressed his disagreement with his teacher in Xinmin congbao (New People’s Periodical) and
Guofeng bao (Guofeng Newspaper). Later in his Intellectual Trends in the Ch’ing Period, Liang summa-
rized the contrast between them, pointing out that Kang was enthusiastic about “the establishment of Con-
fucianism as a state religion,” and “the worship of Confucius together with Heaven,” because he “mistak-
enly considered Christian worship in Europe as the basis of good government and state power,” and
“frequently attempted to equate Confucius with Christ by quoting a variety of apocryphal prognostications
to support [his thesis].” This simplified analogy, Liang continued, would lead scholars to confine them-
selves with “their” Confucius instead of searching for the truth and maintaining their own ideas. See Liang
1959: 103, 95, 104.
144 Limin Bai
missionaries’ view that religion might save China; on the other hand, they
believed that China could still have progress without accepting the Western
God. As Paul Cohen points out, during this period Chinese reformers were
willing to “buy what the missionaries had to sell,” but “were not willing to
accept the conditions which the missionaries thought were implicit in the trans-
action.”93
Another important factor that might have affected Liang’s synthesis of
Western and Chinese learning is Protestant missionaries’ involvement in secular
education in late nineteenth-century China. Statistically, enrollment in Prot-
estant mission schools was at 6000 in 1877, but by 1890 it had increased to
16,836.94 And more significantly, after the first general conference of Protes-
tant missionaries in China (1877), Protestant mission schools began to teach
subjects not only in science, technology, religion, politics, and history of the
West, but also a comprehensive range of Chinese learning. In order to attract
Chinese students, mission schools even directly adopted the popular Chinese
primers The Trimetrical Classic and One Thousand Characters for beginners,
and the format of The Trimetrical Classic was used to create new and suitable
textbooks.95 In short, while Western knowledge influenced Chinese reform-
ers greatly, “Chinese perspectives and values shaped the form and content of
the mission primary-school curriculum” in the late nineteenth century.96
This accommodation of Chinese models and values in mission schools sug-
gests a “process of cognitive contamination”97 in the encounters between East
and West, and between the old and the new. This “cognitive contamination”
gave the ti-yong formula a new dimension: it referred not only to the Chinese
intellectual efforts in reconciling Chinese traditional learning and Western
knowledge, but also to mission schools’ adaptation to the Chinese situation.
Historically, this “cognitive contamination” first occurred during China’s first
encounter with the West—the Jesuits clothed Western influence in traditional
Chinese dress, and Chinese intellectuals, such as Xu Guangqi (1562–1633)
and Mei Wending (1633–1721), cloaked Western concepts “in the name of
traditional symbols.”98 However, this early “contamination” only allowed Xu
and Mei to integrate some knowledge of Western mathematics and astronomy
into the framework of traditional Chinese learning. After the Opium War, the
Westernization movement focused only on the adoption of Western technol-
ogy. In the 1890s, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, as a new generation of
93
Cohen 1978: 589.
94
Cohen 1978:577.
95
For a study of missionaries’ The Trimetrical Classic, see Rawski 1985 : 135–151.
96
Rawski 1985: 151.
97
Berger, Berger & Kellner : 1974: 149.
98
Berger, Berger & Kellner : 1974: 147.
reformers, demanded institutional changes. In so doing, they returned to the

Confucian classics for “traditional symbols,” arguing that the original Confu-
cianism supported institutional reform. This argument was like a manifesto of
the New Text School (jinwen), indicating that their study of Confucian clas-
sics was not for the sake of archaic knowledge or for success in the civil
service examinations, but for the promotion of reform programs.99
Meanwhile, Protestant mission schools’ adaptation to the Chinese situa-
tion, as part of the “cognitive contamination,” directly or indirectly influenced
the course of educational reform. First, teaching methods used in mission
schools represented a sharp contrast to traditional Chinese education, which
Liang Qichao and his associates referred to as zhinao education. In mission
schools children were taught in accordance with the stages in the child’s physi-
cal and intellectual development, and teachers paid much attention to stu-
dents’ ability to understand instead of forcing them to memorize anything
abstract and irrelevant to daily life. In Liang’s criticism of traditional Chinese
education, these factors were all referred to as the characteristics of “Western
education,” and as alternatives to traditional Chinese teaching methods.
Second, mission schools’ curricula contained “practical learning” (shixue)
which, in the history of Chinese education, many thinkers and educators had
been searching for. For instance, Mei Wending dreamed of establishing a school
to study mathematics and astronomy only, and other early-seventeenth-cen-
tury reformers, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, accused tradi-
tional education of being responsible for the collapse of the Ming dynasty, as
it did not contain practical learning. In the late nineteenth century, many sub-
jects taught in mission schools appeared to resonate with the shixue tradition.
Liang in his curriculum particularly emphasized the study of mathematics
and English, which had already been a standard part of mission schools’ cur-
ricula.
Third, mission schools’ curricula accommodated both Western and Chi-
nese learning, but rejected the practice of writing “eight-legged” essays. This
also accorded with Liang’s vision of modern education for children. Although
99
Liang Qichao in 1920 summarized the political intention of the New Text School: “K’ang also used
the Kung-yang Commentary to establish his doctrine of ‘Confucius as a reformer,’ in which he stated that
the Six Classics were all created by Confucius, that both Yao and Shun were used by Confucius as dis-
guises [for advocating reform], and that among the philosophers of the pre-Ch’in period there were none
who did not ‘use antiquity as a pretext for advocating reform.’ This was certainly a very bold assertion
which attempted to effect a sudden and profound liberation from the classical works of the previous few
thousand years, in order to open the door to free learning.” And both Liang and Kang shared the idea of Gu
Yanwu’s “practical application,” “using classical learning as a cloak for their political discussions. They
departed from the original purpose of ‘studying classics for the sake of classics,’” and their program there-
fore became “a prelude to the introduction of European and Western thought” (Liang: 1959:25). For a
discussion of the New Text School and the scholarly origins of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, see Hao
Chang 1971: 7–34, 35–58.
146 Limin Bai
Liang did not directly acknowledge mission schools’ curricula and practice in
his proposal, his reference to “Western education” and the similarities be-
tween his proposed curriculum and the mission primary-school’s syllabus
suggest that missionary practice in education was at least partly the source of
Liang’s idea of Western education.100
As for new textbooks for children, among Liang’s proposed teaching mate-
rial only the Explanations of Characters for Children and The Ma Grammar
were already composed, and the others still waited to be written.101 At one
stage Liang, together with Kang Youwei, took the job in his own hands. Kang
drafted a style sheet (tili), and Liang attempted to compile the new textbooks
he advocated. But his political commitments did not allow him to achieve this
goal, and after five years no books of this kind were yet close to comple-
tion.102
Nevertheless, the task of producing new textbooks was carried out by both
missionaries and Chinese reformers. By 1890 Protestant missionaries had al-
ready produced eighty-four books and forty maps and charts since a “School
and Textbook Series Committee” had been established in 1877. These books
were mostly secular in content, and had a great impact on Chinese reformers
before 1898. The first series of textbooks produced by the Chinese were three
volumes of the Readers for Elementary Learning (Mengxue duben), published
by the Nanyang Gongxue (Nanyang Public School) in 1897. In 1898 Zhong
Tianwei (1840–1901) completed twelve volumes of textbooks for the Sandeng
School he established in Shanghai, and in the same year the Sandeng School
of Wuxi also had its own textbooks in seven volumes.103 These Chinese pro-
ductions paralleled the missionaries’ efforts.
100
Perhaps Liang’s use of the term “Western education” was to avoid any clear reference to missionaries’
works and activities. This appeared to be part of practice among reformers, only a few of whom in the
1890s directly acknowledged that their sources of information about the West originated in missionaries’
writings and translated works, or were obtained through their personal contact with missionaries. The only
exception perhaps was Zheng Guanying, who included many sections of Timothy Richard’s Qiguo xinxue
beiyao in his revised edition of Shengshi weiyan (Warning to a prosperous age) with a clear acknowledg-
ment.
101
Liang began to publish his On Reforms in 1896, the year he also became acquainted with Ma Jianzhong
and his brother Ma Xiangbo. The Ma Grammar was published in 1898. So presumably Liang was in-
formed about the book when he was writing his proposal; or he might have even seen the manuscript
before it was published.
102
At the time he wrote On Reforms, a like-minded colleague in Macao raised the funds to set up a
publishing house for children’s books, and gathered other like-minded scholars to finish the mission that
Liang intended to do. Liang was informed that four books were expected to be completed in a few months,
and they would be printed by Guangshiwu Newspaper Ltd. in Macao. At the same time, these scholars
started to compile a book similar to the Western-style dictionary. See Liang Qichao 1941: 1.55.
103
One may argue that the first series of new Chinese textbooks was produced by Chen Qiu (1851–1904)
in 1894. Chen’s books, however, were not primers in a strict sense. Although all the books were in the
format of the Trimetrical Classic, the content included both elementary education and medical knowledge,
as Chen Qiu composed this series for his Liji Medical School. For a brief introduction of Zhong Tianwei’s
life and work, see Xiong 1994: 535–6.
These new textbooks were produced along with the reformers’ endeavor to
establish new schools modeled on those of the West. Before the 1898 Reform,
Liang Qichao and his associates were strongly intrigued by the practice of
compulsory education in the West. They believed that what had made Ger-
many and Japan powerful was their commitment to basic education. This idea
was accepted not only by influential reformers such as Liang, but also by less
famous scholars and educators such as Zhong Tianwei. As a graduate from
Shanghai Gezhi shuyuan (Gezhi Academy, or Shanghai Polytechnic Institu-
tion and Reading Room),104 Zhong devoted himself to establishing modern
schools, while participating in the translating of Western books along with
missionaries and other Chinese translators. The word “sandeng” he used in
his school’s name meant “the third level of education,” referring to elemen-
tary schooling—from the age of seven to nine, children studied in Mengxue
guan (junior primary school) for three years, focusing on basic literacy skills;
and from the age of ten to twelve, children studied in Jingxue guan (division
for the study of Classical learning) for three years, focusing on the study of
Four Books and other classics, science, and English. He emphasized that only
those who mastered both Western and Chinese learning could be recognized
as excellent students.105 The curriculum he designed and the textbooks he
composed all reflected his own training at Gezhi Academy.
Zhong Tianwei’s case indicates that (1) Liang Qichao’s proposed reform of
education for children was not an isolated phenomenon but a reflection of the
intellectual atmosphere in the 1890s, and (2) the 1898 Reform measures in-
cluded ideas and practice that emerged during this period.106 Although the
Reform lasted only one hundred days, many reform measures were reinstated
after the Boxer Uprising of 1900. In 1902 the first draft of the new regulations
on education envisaged a modern Chinese school system; later Zhang Zhidong
was summoned to revise the draft. In 1904 the regulations were announced,
and in the following year the civil service examination system was officially
abolished. The two events signaled the end of traditional Chinese education
and the birth of a modern school system, to which the reformers’ proposals
and practice contributed greatly. For instance, the 1904 regulations endorsed
compulsory education, which was viewed by Liang Qichao and like-minded
reformers as the issue crucial to China’s survival. Also, Liang’s design of
worshipping Confucius and school holidays, his emphasis on containing arith-
104
Gezhi shuyuan was established in the mid-1870s by a group of Chinese gentry and missionaries, such
as John Fryer, to promote Western science and technology in China.
105
Zhu Youhuan 1986: :2: 578–579.
106
For a discussion of educational theories and experiments before the 1898 Reform, see Borthwick
1983: 38–64.
148 Limin Bai
metic and gymnastics in the primary-school curriculum, and his objection to

treating students like prisoners were all part of or reflected in the regulations.107
In terms of rote learning, the 1904 regulations opposed mechanical memo-
rization, stating it would harm students’ brain development. On the other hand,
the memorization of Confucian classics was still recommended as a neces-
sary part of learning. This was perhaps partly due to the context in which
Liang and his associates criticized rote learning. They charged rote learning
with being harmful to children’s intellectual development against the context
of traditional Chinese curricula, the civil service examination system, and its
by-product—“eight-legged essays.” For example, catechism, the format Liang
Qichao so much appreciated, was actually rote learning. When it was used to
introduce knowledge of science, Liang did not see it as a teaching device
similar to mechanical memorization. In his proposal, a class for the study of
texts in question-answer format did not require students to memorize but to
understand. Also, in his instruction on teaching methods used in his Sandeng
School, Zhong Tianwei clearly stated that Western methods should be applied
to the teaching of Chinese subjects, so as to correct the old teaching method
that made students memorize texts without understanding them first, and that
rote learning should be emphasized in English teaching, as spelling was im-
portant and required memorization. Here Zhong pointed to a necessary bal-
ance between the emphases on the ability to understand and on memorization,
according to subjects concerned.108
The emphasis on the memorizing of Confucian classics in the 1904 regula-
tions was associated with Zhang Zhidong’s vision of a new Chinese educa-
tion. In the course of revising the 1902 draft, Zhang adopted Western ele-
ments from Japanese sources which, in his understanding, had already resolved
the ti-yong problem.109 Although Liang claimed that his synthesis was differ-
ent from Zhang’s, as he aimed to create a new Chinese thought rather than
only adopting some Western technology, his approach, like that of other re-
formers before 1898, was limited by the secondhand nature of his information
about the West. This limitation, as Sally Borthwick points out, in many cases
inevitably led these reformers to “a simplistic and one-dimensional view of
the operations of Western society.” For instance, they were not able to analyze
whether mass literacy was “the cause, concomitant, or production of industri-
alization.” Nor could they see “flaws in nineteenth-century industrialization,”
107
See both the 1902 and 1904 regulations for junior primary schools in Zhu Youhuan 1983–9:3:157–
189.
108
Zhu Youhuan 1983–9: 2: 587. For a discussion of memorization in both Chinese and European classi-
cal education, see Woodside & Elman 1994: 533–534.
109
See Abe 1987: 57–80; Borthwick 1983: 66–68.
such as “child labor in British factories.”110 However, China’s problems at

the time perhaps only allowed these reformers to pay attention to what they
could use in their arguments for China’s educational reform and to finding a
resolution for China’s crisis. The examples of Prussia and Japan convinced
both reformers and policy makers (such as Zhang Zhidong) that universal
education was essential to China’s progress. Also, during his exile in Japan,
Liang’s admiration of the Japanese achievements in modernization grew. At
this point, Liang’s synthesis did not conflict with Zhang’s borrowing from
Japan in the making of the 1904 regulations. Perhaps both believed, or at least
hoped, that a system combining Confucianism with Western elements would
work for China, since it had already worked for Japan. Above all,* * the
1904 regulations bore the great imprint not only of Zhang Zhidong’s ideas,
but also of the intellectual efforts of the late nineteenth century, some of which
were reflected in Liang’s proposed reforms of education for children. Although
the achievement of Protestant missionaries in the promotion of secular educa-
tion in China was not acknowledged in the 1904 regulations, missionaries’
textbooks in science subjects were directly adopted as part of official teaching
manuals for new schools.
Glossary
110
Borthwick 1983:49.
150 Limin Bai
152 Limin Bai
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儿童与中国的生存：梁启超论 1898 年维新变法前的教育1898年改革*

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Children and the Survival of China: Liang Qichao on

Education Before the 1898 Reform

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

[ Access provided at 19 Apr 2020 15:52 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

CHILDREN AND THE SURVIVAL OF CHINA:

On the eve of the 1898 Reform, Liang Qichao (1873–1929) advocated

Late Imperial China Vol. 22, No. 2 (December 2001): 124–155

A social-Darwinian perspective: children’s education and the fate of

According to the rules of biology, man’s mind, talent, physical form,

in Darwin, and they deliberately interpreted his theory of evolution to serve

A comparative approach: Liang’s criticism of zhinao education

Liang’s criticism of mechanical memorization was linked to his critique of

Liang’s proposed curriculum: a vision of modern education for children

There was a correlation between Liang’s effort to broaden the content of

Liang’s synthesis of Chinese and Western learning

edge (such as Yang Guanxian’s rejection in the 1600s),84 as government

reformers, demanded institutional changes. In so doing, they returned to the

metic and gymnastics in the primary-school curriculum, and his objection to

such as “child labor in British factories.”110 However, China’s problems at

Bray, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender, Berkeley: University of California

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